83 Cherry Hill by kelly bell photography licensed under Creative Commons.

We were worried for a minute there. WMATA’s FY2022 budget, which runs from June 2021 to June 2022, could have been bad. But the $2.07 billion operating budget passed at the WMATA Board’s meeting in April means that, while not the full restoration to pre-pandemic levels that advocates hoped for, services will look fairly similar to how they used to before the pandemic.

What’s in the (money) bag?

Thanks to an influx of $729 million in federal relief after fare revenues collapsed in 2020 and early 2021, WMATA’s FY2022 budget restores about 80 - 85% of pre-pandemic service levels for train and bus, respectively, from June.

We already knew back in December that the projected down-to-the-studs budget WMATA had to present at the time for FY2022 might not come to pass, due to federal relief. But the Metro board’s certification of this not-too-bad budget has a special significance in light of Mayor Bowser’s recently-announced reopening plans.

Rail services will be kept at 80% of pre-pandemic levels, with no reductions or station closures planned. Bus services will soon ramp up to 85%, with service improvements planned in early June such as late-night services, essential for many second-shift workers to reach home as late as 2 am.

The revised budget doesn’t just mean decent levels of service; Metro also has to invest in longer-term projects to protect its sustainability. Alexandria’s Potomac Yard station is slated to open in spring 2022, and long-delayed service on the Silver Line Phase 2 extension (six new stations eastward from Reston beyond Dulles) is scheduled to begin in early 2022.

One of riders’ biggest requests, eliminating the transfer penalty from bus to rail, which is among the more regressive in the nation, got no love in this budget, though we made some headway in 2020 with a slight increase in the discount from $0.50 to $1.00. Comparable systems in New York City, San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Boston don’t charge rail riders when they transfer to bus. This makes sense since many lower-income communities don’t benefit from a train station.

What and who informed the budget?

To form the budget, Metro’s planners and bean-counters modeled ridership and fare revenues, combining those with stated priorities concerning equity and service levels, and of course the federal relief funds. The final budget also comes on the heels of a budget survey that garnered a whopping 22,400 responses, a ten-year record that suggests a high level of engagement in the return of transit services in the region. Metro says that 5,400 comments were received from persons of color, 1,100 from residents living on low incomes, 3,700 from active bus riders and 8,200 from active rail riders (who are the rest?).

Will the partial services be equitably distributed, by which we mean prioritizing the needs of those who rely most on transit? In December WMATA revised its bus service guidelines as a “Framework for Transit Equity”, which could set the stage for systematic improvements by establishing more equity-oriented criteria for evaluating existing and potential services. One to watch.

What does a mostly-there transit system mean for an equitable recovery?

Image by MW Transit Photos licensed under Creative Commons.

With the Mayor’s recent announcement that most services and venues will see capacity limits lifted as of May 21, and the rest scheduled for full reopening June 11, a smooth reopening (which we all hope is healthy) will depend on workers getting to work and people moving around easily and reliably.

Back in February, Metro’s planners projected 34% of pre-pandemic rail ridership for the year to come, which is 106 million trips, but they’ve since updated to 42%. Ridership is higher for bus, which is already at 60%.

Service quality and reliability carry a special significance in a post-pandemic period. Evidence suggests that using transit while masked carries low risk of covid, especially if you’re vaccinated. So there’s no substantive reason to return to cars on an individual level as our vaccination levels increase.

But there’s a huge cost ahead if people don’t find transit meets their needs. A mass preference for cars —the dreaded “Carmageddon” scenario — would cost the recovery its vitality by increasing congestion, air pollution (the same conditions partly responsible for COVID-19 disparities in Black and Brown communities), and likely injuries and fatalities from traffic violence, which have increased in DC in recent months even without cars on the road.

That’s not a foregone conclusion. If this not-dire WMATA budget pairs with a vision-led DC transportation budget from Mayor Bowser, prioritizing safety, vibrant public spaces for people not cars, and building on DDOT’s progress on bus priority, it may not happen at all. That’s because people like spending time and money in environments where cars don’t come first, but that make room for transit and other modes.

Gazing into our recovery crystal ball

A recent survey finds telework is the highest barrier to transit return (the second is aversion because of covid risk). But the advent of remote work doesn’t take away from the need for people to get around cities outside of cars. Many jobs can’t be done remotely, and for those that can, surveys show a preference among both employees and employers for hybrid setups. Many trips happen for non-work purposes.

Vision will be needed in revitalizing a DC that people want to spend more time in. Livability - that special mix of opportunity, stability, equity, environment and recreation - takes transit to work. (Plus bikes, walking, and scooters).

Transit was the backbone we needed it to be during the pandemic, as the mode of choice of many lower-income essential workers, who kept our basic services functioning during a tough time. Any bright future for DC will continue to need it funded and prioritized on a sustained basis. While we can breathe a sigh of relief that WMATA’s budget is most of the way there, it’ll be essential that service levels meet riders’ evolving needs throughout the next year.

Caitlin Rogger is deputy executive director at Greater Greater Washington. Broadly interested in structural determinants of social, economic, and political outcomes in urban settings, she worked in public health prior to joining GGWash. She lives in Capitol Hill.